Rice Cookies

Rice cookies are very popular in Iran and I grow up watching my mom bake them every year for Norouz (Persian New Year). She taught me how to sift the flour, prepare the dough and shape each cookie into a ball, use a mold to give each cookie a very traditional shape & finally decorated it with poppy seeds and saffron. And as much I love all that tradition and enjoyed the ritual of baking rice cookies; it was a long process and would take a full day.

But who has time now? Most of us work full time, take care of kids, or go to school.

So I made few changes to mom's recipe and created a very easy to follow and bake recipe that is Gluten-Free. Remember the quality of your cookies is dependent on the quality of your ingredients especially butter and rice flour; use good quality butter and you'll be rewarded with crispy, crumbly, buttery rice cookies that would melt in your mouth :)

Rice Cookies

Yield: 20-30 pieces Cook Time: 12 minutes

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup Rice flour

1 stick butter; cut into cubes

1 cup powdered sugar

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Process:

Place rice flour & powdered sugar in the food processor and pulse to combine

Add the cold butter, egg yolk & vanilla and pulse until the mixture almost comes together and form clumps

Transfer the clumps into your work surface; knead the clumps together until you form a dough and place in a plastic bag

Refrigerate the dough for couple hours

Once you’re ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350°F /175°C

Cover a baking tray with Parchment paper

Remove the dough from the refrigerator & knead until the dough is soft

Evenly roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface using a rolling pin & then cut the dough with any shape cookie cutter that you like; I used heart shape for Valentine’s Day, but any kind would work

Line the cookies up in the baking tray and bake for 5-10 minutes or until the tips of the cookies are turning golden

Remove from the oven and let cool for 15 minutes

To decorate the cookies you need: A batch of royal icingEdible PearlsFood color sprayPipe icing around the edges of the cookies;using a pastry bag with Wilton tip# 3Spray the cookies; the food spray is available at Michael’s and they come in all sort of fun colors for every occasionAnd decorate with pearls